#i want coming of age and self discovery and all that because I don't feel like I've DONE it yet in gender terms

[trans-cuchulainn]

i guess the reason so many books featuring trans characters have them able to go stealth and make it so other characters don't know they're trans unless they say something is because that's an escapist fantasy for many trans authors who don't get that and want to imagine what it's like to live in a world where you don't get misgendered on sight every single day, and because they don't want to write about the latter (very fair)

but also when these are YA books it depends on the characters being able to medically transition at like 14 and i have literally never in my life met a single person who was able to do that (partly because I live in the UK where you can't and also I am old enough that for people my age, coming out as a preteen would've been way harder and rarer than it would be for current teen-aged protagonists)

so idk. i would like to read a book with trans characters who feel like real people living in the real world occasionally. it's hard to walk a path when you never get to see other people do it first and never get to witness it safely in fiction before you experience it IRL, and only ever seeing people walk roads that don't even exist in your reality doesn't really help at all tbh

[akindplace]

To those afraid of aging: don't be. You will find yourself, you will slowly find your purpose as you age. Give yourself time to process what happened to you when you were younger. Don't pressure yourself to be at the same speed as everyone else, don't compare yourself too much.

If there is something you wish to do, you should find the courage to do it, to follow that career, that dream, that relationship. Achieving things takes time, and everyone has their own timing.

You’re still young, you still have time to make decisions that will impact you in the long term, and it’s okay to not feel ready yet to commit to just one thing for your whole life. Please don't let other people push you into making decisions that should impact the rest of your life while you are so young. Don't pressure yourself either.

The thing about adulting is that everyone is just winging it, no one is any idea what they are doing, not even your parents, or grandparents. We are all just living, trying to deal with the unpredictability of life.

It is okay to change your mind about who you are, what you want. It's okay to feel scared of the future. It is okay to want more. It is okay to fight to achieve what you want. It's okay if you don't care about achievements. It's okay to be lost when you're not even a full grown adult. Because most adults are still lost, but less than when they were younger.

It does get better. You get more freedom, you can make your choices, you figure out what you like and what you can't stand, then you start molding a life according to your needs, your happiness. Please remember life is here to be enjoyed.

I spent my teenage years and early twenties so anxious about the future, and it didn't help me prepare for all the absurd stuff that happened in my life. I have had to spend a long time just healing from the past and figuring out the present.

You can only learn about life if you live it, by going through it. Let the future come, just one day at a time, you don't need to rush into anything. It's an amazing journey, but please be patient, kind and forgiving with yourself. You are still growing and figuring it out. And you will.

You have to live a bit so you can figure out who you are, what you want to do, how you can change. Don't be afraid of throwing yourself out there just because you're not perfect or you are afraid of failing. Just because you have failed, it doesn't make you a failure, it makes you a student of life. You didn't know it before, but you know better after failing. Don't be so afraid of judgement from others, live the life that feels most authentic to you by being honest about who you are.

Embrace life, it is here to be enjoyed, you are here to figure stuff out and heal and find yourself and you will! These things take time, but you will! Life is a beautiful journey of self-discovery, it will continue to surprise you until you die. There is always so much to see, to learn, to grow, to become. And you will get there.

[snickerdoodlles]

I was gonna ask you for ☕☕☕ on Kim characterisations but I know that could put you at risk of assassination 💀 so free choice! Any ☕ on anything you need to get off your chest - I love u

😂 it is a choose violence game, let's play with fire 🔥 three Kim characterizations i don't much care for:

writing Kim as really old

like. hmmmm. i feel like a lot of fic out there is just really bad at characterizing young 20 yos, there are a lot of stories that write Kim's vibes like he's 38 yo or something. it's. bizarre. 21/22 yo is still so young. there's still so much uncertainty at that age and so much self-discovery to come. i've complained about this before so i don't want to just rehash that but. yeesh. some people really kinda suck at writing "kid in college" aged characters.

not letting Kim be playful

honestly, this one kinda follows on the previous point? there's a very annoying trend of writing ~older~ characters as only ever very serious. and like, aside from the irritation at the way people are really bad at early 20s vibes, people never outgrow playfulness. in canon, i'm pointing to Porsche trapping Kinn under the sheets and farting or them huffing their morning breaths in each other's faces (i love u canon ❤). but people still do ridiculous shit at 40/50/60/70/80/ALL THE AGES too. 40yo sisters who greet each other by punching the other in the boob. the 60yo neighbor who tells me my shoelaces are untied every time he sees me in sandals. the 50yo uncle who flicks popcorn in the mouths of anyone who falls asleep during movie night. there's no age limit to this sort of thing!

but while some of the ultra seriousness seems to be a weird age thing, it's like people also missed that Kim is playful? he's very intense when he's in mafia business mode and he's a nightmare to the guards (❤), but he plays along with Khun. he teases Chay. he has a good rapport with other university students. he can be more lowkey playful than others, but Kim's not made of stone, he has his fun too.

Wik being a burden on Kim

this one starts running into differences in headcanon-- like personally, i'm looking for fics where Wik is Kim's home. i've cried about this elsewhere so i'll keep it short, but Wik is the life Kim poured blood, sweat, and tears into to build up brick by brick. Wik is the life Kim wants, it's the parts of him he thinks are the best of him. i actually make the MC of the ep4 university one of Kim's best friends (i call him Green), and one of my favorite headcanons i've come up with for them is that everyone thinks Green twists Kim's arm into doing outreach events, but actually Green is Kim's connection to university news because he loves doing them but never knows who to ask. Kim desperately wants to be a source of good inspiration to others and have purpose outside of violence, and Wik is his way of doing that. Wik is not a burden on Kim (in fact, i'd argue Kim all but said he is a burden on Wik, but i digress).

so, that's my personal preference for Kim's relationship with Wik, but obviously not everyone's going to have the same characterization and that's cool. where i start to get annoyed is when people write him as very...hmm. dismissive? of it. or otherwise seems like he doesn't like any aspect of it. i straight up back click on any fic that has Kim fuck up the name of some popular musician. this is not a specific call out, but for example-- i remember reading something where there was this offhand line of Kim being like "and there's a request for a show with some other musician, wangson jack?" and just. no. back click, goodbye, nope. shit like that really starts to bug me. some of it is personal irritation at how awful a lot of english speakers are towards asian artists (which like. random fandom people are not at fault for the crimes of USamerican music reporters. but maybe consider that until people overall are less shitty and dismissive towards them, one off lines referencing real life musicians like this are better off deleted). but over all i just...really, really dislike disrespectful attitudes like that (esp for something related to the arts) and i don't want to read them in my favorite character. Kim is pursuing a career in the music industry for himself--Kim being, u know, Kim, he's going to take it very seriously and with that, also hold a lot of respect towards his fellow musicians generally speaking. at the very least, he's going to be cordial and pleasant with them because no one likes working with an asshole and Kim is trying to keep his mafia bullshit far away from his Wik goals. not everyone's going to have the same characterization headcanons i do for how much i think Kim would pour himself into music and love it, but i really don't vibe with any take where Wik is a burden on or a drag for Kim.

and a bonus ☕ because i luv u too anon: anything where Kim doesn't love his brothers or sees them as actual competition instead of the ones he wants to protect the most. this is not a surprise to anyone here, u all know how much i love brothers, but i've noticed that fandom gets kinda caught up in the chess metaphors sometimes. and to that i say: 1. Terry Pratchett yall: sin is when you treat people like things. 2. Terry Pratchett again: chess is a stupid ass metaphor for real life. 3. kp canon agrees with that. Korn is shit at playing chess. (the fucking. ep1 game. omfg. Chan is all but eating his pieces to let Korn win. i'm still howling over the scholars mate in ep5.) Korn is noticeably shit at all his hobbies that are metaphors for controlling people. which is the point! the boys fail every time they try to play his games, because you cannot play people like you would a game. every triumph is rooted in overturning the game board completely.

[ send a ☕, get a bitchy* fic opinion ]

*personal preference related, we’re not here to be mean

[ssaalexblake]

on behalf of all the people who didn't realise they weren't straight until their early 20's (even despite how obvious it may be in hindsight) i wish a very happy Fuck You to all the self absorbed assholes saying Yaz's arc is bad or lacks agency or sucks as gay rep Because she didn't know this till she was 20ish and didn't admit it to herself until EOTD, like honestly, at this point go take a long walk off a short pier.

The people who didn't ~see~ thasmin before it was verbally recognised are merely irritating and exhibiting heterosexual blindness, You lot are out there insulting the experiences of many very Real people because it's not good enough for you.

Literally. What you're peddling is SO awful and said with the assumed moral high ground, and all i have to offer you is one huge 'ew' at that terrible behaviour.

Look, this is not actually about Yaz, but lol, Yaz was a bullied teenager on the verge of or actively suicidal, she is not shown to have One friend and her family are actively shocked she's taken friends home in arachnids because Yaz doesn't Have friends. That Yaz did not immediately clock she was into Thirteen and thought they were just good mates actually makes perfect sense bc she doesn't know what #besties feels like to differentiate the two things. Is that depressing? yeah, but the point is yaz built herself up into the person she is in tpotd in a coming of age type story, she Does have support and friends at the end, she Does know her sexuality better by the end, she Has achieved what she wanted in being able to help people. She grew and learnt! Good for her.

It's also like, personally think that it's a more valid interpretation of the show to say that Yaz was troubled and didn't want to admit this to herself before eotd because of 13's avoidance and behaviour, rather than anything else going on. Yaz is never shown to be repressing this because of the gayness, she's worried because 13 is squirrely and they fight so much and 13 Still doesn't open up to her.

Mostly, in the end, idgaf what you think of Yaz's arc but if it's related to one type of person's discovery of their sexuality being Better than another then honestly, you need to not subject other people to your 'takes', because all you're being is cruel and you don't even have the self awareness to realise.

Watch your damn words. I don't care if somebody realised they're not straight/not cis/not whatever when they're 99 years old. To use an internet cliche, that is Perfectly Valid and a story worth telling in any kind of media out there. If you want to watch the story of a queer character in dw very secure abt their sexuality and Not on a voyage of self discovery/coming of age narrative that happens to include that Discovery, go and watch Bill's episodes and stop saying shitty things about real people not being good enough for you.

[aroaceconfessions]

i think the oversexualization of teenagerhood and the way we talk about adolescence contributes to the amount of teens who ID as ace

people on this website cannot seem to make a point with generalizing or ignoring nuance. they talk about how it's normal to feel sexual desire as a teen which is true but in this discussion i feel it gets lost that it's also normal not to

it's normal to not really care about sex until your 20s. it's normal to start exploring that side of yourself when you're older and not as a high schooler. i'm sick of this narrative that all teens are horny and sex obsessed. the trend of incredibly sexually charged teen dramas doesn't help. we are contributing to a culture that makes 16 year olds feel like they're behind if they haven't lost their 'virginity' yet

i really don't want to come across as if i'm saying teens shouldn't ID as ace. you absolutely can ID as ace at that age and i encourage young people to adopt the label if it feels true and brings them comfort. but at the same time, it's normal to be a teenager who doesn't want sex yet. it can mean you're ace, but it doesn't always

ultimately i just hate the way people insist on painting all teenagers as horny and desperate to have sex as soon as possible. i hate these blanket statements. i'm speaking from experience as someone who was a teen who didn't want anything to do with sex, ID'd as ace, and then got past high school age and realized i actually do desire sex, i just wasn't in a place where i was comfortable with it in high school. i also say this because i was partially right-- i'm greyace. what prevented me from realizing that sooner was the fact that high school is a really weird and awkward time

you don't have to have everything figured out by the time you graduate high school or turn 18. the time for self discovery doesn't have to end when puberty does

i say this because i want to bring comfort to any teens who are questioning and worried like i was. being ace is good. there are plenty of people like you. the world is so much bigger than high school. you don't have to be like those teens on tv who hook up with strangers or have orgies. you're normal, the showrunners are the weirdos

i also say this because i absolutely despise aggressively sexualized teen shows and believe they have to potential to be damaging to the teens who watch them. i don't know what showrunner needs to hear this, but high school is not sexy!!!

[orange-orchard-system]

Something I've noticed a lot recently is that I've become remarkably good at intrapersonal skills. I'm not perfect, of course, but I have enough judgement of them to say I can be proud of my intrapersonal skills – things such as time management, confidence, open-mindedness, perseverance, ability to handle problems maturely, and recognizing why I may be feeling like shit, just as some examples.

I don't say all this to brag. Rather, I say this because my theory is that I became so good at intrapersonal skills due to my plurality. Or, rather, due to exploring and seeking to understand my plurality.

First, we had to learn the basics of working as a system. Learning to listen to each other (both figuratively and literally) and how to handle conflicts translated to learning how to listen to our needs and handle setbacks without us even realizing it. Then, as we began unraveling exactly how best to live as a system, we began to see each other as a support system (pun not intended), which gave us the confidence and safety net we needed to try new things, handle larger problems, and figure out who we are and what we want in life.

This self-discovery peaked when we finally found the source of a lot of background stress that had been building up for years, and identified how to treat it. It was a breakthrough, and we became much more aware of exactly where our limits were, how to help each other, and – through our improved self-image and mood – that we could make a future for ourselves. Mix that with some life lessons we've learned over the years, and somehow we seem to have more confidence and maturity than a lot of the people around us, even when we're at the same age and stage in life. (And yet, it often feels as though we've only just caught up, having been held back for so long due to ignorance about how to help ourselves.)

We're still learning about ourselves. I don't think there will be a day on this earth that we're not going through more discoveries, or a day where we can sit back and say there's nothing more for us to do. But I'm really, really proud of how far we've come.

This also makes me excited about plurality in general. I mean, look at that!! Intrapersonal skills are extremely useful things in day-to-day life, and we stumbled into them just by learning to work as a system?? Plurality is so cool!!

Ahaha, I'm done now. Thank you for reading.

[xiaq]

Why do feelings have to be so confusing???

I’ve never been super into labels, but if I had to choose I probably would have gone with aroace. I kind of figured I wouldn’t ever find someone I wanted to be in a relationship with and that was fine.

But now I’m 30 and somehow in a relationship for the very first time with this person that I love so much. And it’s wonderful and amazing in so many ways, but I also feel so crazy with it??

I feel like a teenager with their first crush but also too old for that and it’s like I don’t know how to trust myself in this because I’ve never felt anything close to this before.

Feeling romantic and sexual attraction for the first time there’s a part of me that’s like how has everyone been living like this the whole time??? It still doesn’t feel like it should be real somehow, even though I’m now experiencing it firsthand.

Anyway I don’t know exactly where I’m going with this, but if you either advice or even just stories to make me feel a little less ridiculous, I’d love to hear them!

I think it's really REALLY important to remember that socially reinforced ideas of normalcy when it comes to exploring sexuality are not, actually, normal. A. Because people are people and what works for one person doesn't work for others. While there's obviously going to be a bell curve on the graph of "when do people typically sort out who they want to kiss (or not kiss) and start doing that" there is going to be a steady, not insignificant, number of folks that are on the upward and downward swing of that bell curve before you even get to the far outliers, and that's to be expected. B. Traditionally accepted timelines for building a sense of sexual identity don't apply anymore. The average age for (first) marriage is creeping back each year. In the US in 1900 it was 26 for men and 22 for women. Now it's 29 and 27 respectively. Women, especially, don't have nearly the pressure placed upon them that they used to to quickly find someone who will take care of them seeing as we can now open bank accounts and own property and work for (mostly) equal pay and all that jazz. So there's that to consider.

But also. Humans, human bodies, are never stagnant. You might have heard the fun factoid that all our cells are replaced every 7 years. That's not entirely accurate, but it's true that the body does regenerate skin and bone and liver and stomach, and so on, cells at a kind of mind-boggling rate. There are things that we're born with that don't change like some of the neurons in our cerebral cortex, I think, but as a species we are generally made to adapt to new experiences and environments so much so that our bodies are in a constant state of change themselves. You're just...doing what you're built to do. Something new has happened and you're adapting to it.

And yes, it can be scary and make you feel very vulnerable when you don't have historical relationship or sex-related context like other people your age might have, but that's when you get to lean on friends and/or talk to your therapist to make sure you're approaching things in a healthy way, there aren't red flags you're missing, etc. Because humans are also pack animals and we thrive in communities in which we can share each others burdens and wisdom.

As someone who also had built what I thought was a pretty clear assessment of my romantic and sexual identity over 29 years, only to have it challenged and rebuilt at 30, I fully empathize with the way you feel. But I leaned into the feelings of confusion (and frankly, giddiness, at times). Who says teenagers are the only ones that get to experience first crushes? Who says 30 is too old for self-discovery? You get to decide how you interact with the world. Who cares what other people are doing if what you're doing makes you happy and hurts no one.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

Hi sex witch, i realise that this is not an actual sex ed related question and I hope this isn't overstepping any bounds.

I'm sort of in a weird spot right now a la my sexuality and am trying to figure out if I actually want a relationship and if what I feel is romantic attraction or Friendship levelled up. I've known for a long time that I'm Demisexual or Ace, and I thought I knew that I still felt romantic attraction but now I'm less sure.

How did you come to realise that you were aromantic? In that discovery did you ever wonder if it was a sort of 'mental block' or something similar that would be better off working through? (I ask because I'm sort of stuck in that state of mind right now, and I'm just curious to see if it's a common experience or not)

I realise that this is a fairly sensitive topic, and I really don't mean offense by asking.

I also realise that no two people's experiences will be the same but I was interested in hearing about it from another person's perspective.

I hope you have a great day whether or not you give this ask the time of day.

I've asked you other things in the past and it's always been brilliantly helpful. Thanks a lot for everything you do.

hi anon,

no worries about overstepping boundaries :) this is a pretty reasonable thing to ask of someone, and I'm happy to talk about it!

there's a funny story that I tell about the moment I probably should have known, but didn't yet have the language. in sixth grade my class had an assignment that involved making a collage timeline of the rest of our lives (a proto-vision board of sorts) and I think I was the only kid in the class who didn't put getting married on my timeline. everyone else did, as far as I can remember, and most of them also included having kids. being a pedantic little fuck I pointed out to several of my friends that it was really unreasonable to assume they would find someone they liked enough to marry who liked them back, to which everyone told me (paraphrasing) to shut the fuck up and stop being a little bastard.

but it still seemed very strange to me, because even when I was very young - back when I barely had the language to conceptualize being gay, let alone aromantic - I never imagined my life with a romantic partner. romantic pairings were interesting in stories, sure, I ate that shit up from a very young age! the star-crossed lovers shit going on in American Dragon: Jake Long did a number on my developing brain, and my Barbies and Littlest Pet Shops got up to INSANE relationship drama, but for myself it never really felt, like, relevant? not unpleasant, just uninteresting.

but I still had crushes on people as I grew up, and more importantly I had crushes on people of various genders, so during my teen years I was WAY more preoccupied with repressing my burgeoning bisexuality than drawing any conclusions about my romantic orientation

spoilers: the bisexuality won.

in college I had a friend who identified as asexual at the time, who spent maybe a year trying to convince me that I was aromantic. and I didn't want to hear it! I don't know why, honestly; maybe some part of me, despite loving the community I had found coming into my queerness, was still subconsciously afraid of being too different and grappling with the consequences.

so instead I did this uuuuh real dirtbag thing where instead of just acknowledging to myself that I was pretty fundamentally uninterested in romantic relationships and that that's fine, I spent the first half of college leaning hard on self-deprecation to explain my single status. oh, me? why aren't I dating? well, I'd probably be a really bad partner. yeah, I suck. I mean, I'm so busy all the time! and I'm weird.

(at the time I know I definitely had friends who assumed I was Like That because my parents were divorced, which is hilarious old-fashioned and also categorically untrue. I was Like This way before my parents got divorced!)

it actually took a relationship ending pretty badly to make peace with the idea that maybe I didn't want a relationship at all. I won't get into the details on that, because it involves another person and we were both very young and accidentally hurt each other a lot in ways we didn't mean and I don't think anyone was the villain, but I don't want it to come across like I had one bad breakup and then swore off romance, a thing I'd previously been interested in, forever. it was more like I found myself in a really heightened situation - they really desperately needed a good and attentive romantic partner after getting out of a bad relationship, I wanted our friendship to stay exactly the same but with a sexual component - that made very, very obvious what I was actually looking for in non-platonic relationships. which was, I guess, actually pretty platonic relationships, but with genitals involved.

haha just kidding, I actually didn't get that part through my skull until I spent an entire summer crying constantly, dissociating frequently, and spending way too much time on BAD dates having even worse sex that made me feel gross! but we got there eventually.

that part probably isn't super relatable to you if you're somewhere in the ace realm, sorry about that.

anyway, once the dust settled and I felt halfway human again I was feeling vulnerable and open to change - finally willing to see myself in a new way and reckon with parts of myself that I hadn't been before. I remembered what my buddy had always said about me seeming Really Aromantic, and I let it settle on me. how would I feel, if I actually was aromantic? how would it change my life, how I thought about myself?

and if I can use a cliche with you? it felt like a weight rolling off my shoulders. I suddenly had a whole sturdy base to build a better understanding of myself on, an easy way to justify the way I lived that didn't require throwing myself under a bus.

thinking of myself through the lens of aromanticism felt like a huge, HUGE relief, and frankly I think that, more than anything, is the best way for anyone to decide if they should be applying any identity label to themselves. which brings us back to you! I actually don't believe in the model of sexuality and gender that posits a secret innate Right Answer buried in each person that they'll discover if the just find the right terminology. all of the words we use are the result of our time and place, right? people like us existed all through history with different words for themselves, and they'll exist way after us calling themselves things we can't imagine.

so basically: I came to realize I was aromantic because calling myself aromantic felt like loving myself, and if that's the case for you than I strongly recommend you do it, too.

happy pride xoxo

[abeautifulblog]

thoughts on the Barbie movie

Finally got around to seeing the Barbie movie -- I think some of its messaging could have been clearer, but on the whole it was a lot of fun, and one of the most visually-innovative things I've seen onscreen in ages. So much stuff these days bills itself as "deconstruction," when more often than not it's just a mean-spirited mockery of something the writers don't actually understand. The Barbie movie is deconstruction done right, by people who are deeply in the know about the material (which in this case equals the entire Barbie mythos/ideology), and love it anyway, warts and all. Good deconstruction is both a critique and a love letter.

The theme that the movie understands and communicates most clearly is about the impossible, contradictory directives that are constantly put on women -- "you need to be assertive, but you mustn't be a bitch", etc -- and how unfair it is that half the population isn't given the same respect and the same chance at success. Barbieland flips the script so that the Kens are the empty-headed ornaments while Barbies run the world (which I suspect is what made a lot of men so viscerally uncomfortable with the movie), but that's also eventually recognized to be just as unfair as the Real World where patriarchy reigns.

What's a lot muddier is the messaging around how exactly men participate in the patriarchal oppression of women, and how the patriarchy harms them too. Because patriarchy is a pyramid scheme -- and not all men are on the top of that pyramid, nor can they all be. It convinces men to strive for an unattainable ideal of masculinity (not unlike the unattainable ideal that Barbie represents for femininity, actually!) and then penalizes those who fall short for not being "man enough," and paints it as a personal failing, not one that's baked into the system.

A lot of the gags around Ken Discovers Toxic Masculinity legitimately had me in stitches, because oh my god, too true, but then it didn't really offer any conclusions about it. Granted, this is the Barbie Movie not the Ken Movie, and he already gets more of a character arc than female love interests usually do, so I'm not going to rend my garments all "BUT WHAT ABOUT THE MENNNNS??"..... but if you're not going to follow through on toxic masculinity, then maybe better to leave that particular can of worms unopened. There's more than enough for feminism to talk about without it.

Personally, I would have preferred if Ken weren't an antagonist -- if he'd just been the supportive himbo boyfriend who cheerfully follows Barbie on her journey of self-discovery, and backs her every play, and has never had a mean thought in his empty head, which is kind of what the promo materials led me to expect -- but that would have been an entirely different plot. (Possibly one in which Ken encounters the real world and finds that the men there think he should tone down his self-expression (for coming off as too GAY) and be less of a simp for his girlfriend, and he's like, Wow that sounds terrible actually, no thank you!)

In any case, I don't envy the women who are now having uncomfortable conversations with their husbands and boyfriends who got mad about the movie and went on the offensive. Because this is not a movie that softshoes its message to coddle to men's fee-fees -- its male characters are largely mocked and/or marginalized, and I imagine that a lot of men who saw it, and who haven't ever examined their privilege, came out of it feeling personally attacked, and reflexively wanted to attack it in turn and reject everything it's saying.

To which I'm like… y'all need to sit with your feelings for a minute. Remember that one movie taking the piss out of men does not actually make a single dent in the power and privilege that men enjoy in the real world. And then think about the fact that media BY men (which is most of it) routinely treats women the same way -- frivolous and sidelined, ornaments and sex objects. And the fact that we consider that the normal way of things -- that women are expected to watch themselves being portrayed like that and enjoy it.

(A line that I think should have gotten more weight is at the end when Barbie says, "I want to be the one doing the making, not the thing being made," because it's such a clear, straightforward articulation of the subject vs. object distinction.)

Storytelling-wise (to put on my nerd-for-narrative hat), the third act of the movie runs into difficulty with the fact that this is not about human characters, but about anthropomorphized archetypes of femininity and masculinity -- and how do you write a narratively satisfying "ending" for things that don't actually end? And how do you do that within the context of not just a doll world, but the Barbie world, with a gender-unequal status quo that isn't actually going to change either? With the conflicts they set up, I'm not sure there was a wholly satisfactory way to end it.

But anyway, none of that detracted from my enjoyment of the movie -- it's fun, heartfelt, thought-provoking, a continuous source of pleasure and novelty for the eyeballs, and consistently hilarious. Definitely worth the watch.

(And if you want some feminist-themed media that does do a complex exploration of how the patriarchy fucks men over too, even the men who think they're winning at it, I recommend Agent Carter, it is so so good. (The first season, anyway. 😑) There are five notable male characters in it, and the only one having a good time is the one who's declined to buy into society's narrow idea of what constitutes acceptable masculinity.)

[ben-talks-art]

Kindness, Strength, and Morals

This is probably going to be a very messy post since my thoughts and feelings towards the topic are kinda all over the place and I don't think I have the necessary amount of maturity and insight towards the subject to provide a satisfying conclusion... But I still wanna try talking about it anyway cause I feel this could be interesting to discuss.

So, basically, I've been thinking about how certain pieces of different media try to showcase depictions of bullying, abusers, victims, misuse of power, the consequences of one's actions on others, and so on, and all the different ways they each try to offer a, quote on quote, solution to the problem, and which of these solutions I, an outsider who really hasn't suffered THAT much abuse through life, like more or like less and why.

Naturally, my perspective is probably not gonna be as helpful as that of an actual victim or someone who closely studies these things as part of their job, but I still would like to take a moment to go "This is what the media I'm consuming is making me think about" and wonder if they're doing an actual good job and talking about these things.

So the first thing that kinda sparked my desire to discuss this was the movie Encanto.

For those who never saw it, Encanto is a movie about this one teen, Mirabel, who's the only member of her super-powered family who doesn't have powers, and due to that, her and certain members of her family tend to make her feel like she has less value than them.

Through some shenanigans, personal journey, and magic events revolving around helping their magic house that got sick, she ends up accepting that she has as much value as everyone even if she can't do all the stuff they can do, and by the end, she becomes closer than ever with her family.

Now, this is a nice message and all, to teach people who feel like they're less that they are just as much as anyone else, and that even if you feel powerless you are still strong enough to do what matters most for those that need you, be it your loved ones, or even just yourself.

The things is... This story brings up a small problem that I often see a lot for these types of plots, that being, the victim of the situation is usually the one that needs to save themselves.

Mirabel fighting to prove her worth is great, but it kinda bothers me that she has to fight basically alone. There isn't a lot of focus on her family members realizing how destroyed she is inside and how much they're indirectly hurting her. She literally has a whole song around the theme of "I'm not fine."

Red from OSP went into great detail about this in a Twitter thread and addressed how the victims of the situation basically had to do all the work of healing herself while the family basically just stood there watching and going "glad you finally feel good about yourself!" *thumbs up*

Now, the message still works because at the end of the day, you are the only person in your life that you can fully control, so it makes sense that stories will try to show that most of the work to begin self-healing lies in yourself, but not everyone has that inner strength to want to help themselves.

Many people are dealing with a lot of pressure and expectations of real life that are engraved into our minds from an early age, constantly being told "this is how good you need to be if you want to be happy!" and constantly comparing ourselves with others.

It's great that Mirabel decided to go on her journey to save her magic house and that resulted in her happy discoveries, but what if she hadn't? What if the house hadn't gotten sick? Would Mirabel just be miserable forever? Because nobody else was really doing anything to help her.

This made me think that, while I like these stories for addressing the pain of the victims to make us understand and sympathize with them, I would like to also see more stories that show how others could help them in case they can't help themselves.

Two stories that come to my mind on that are the manga "Is It My Fault That I Got Bullied?" and the webtoon "Get Schooled."

The manga tells a story about a former bullying victim that became a teacher in order to help out other victims, and through some twists of fate, ends up becoming the teacher of the daughter of his former bully, and now needs to decide if he will help her or not.

meanwhile, the webtoon tells a story about a government system that tries to directly fight against bullies at school and protect victims of abuse by openly infiltrating problematic schools, finding out who the oppressors are, and basically bodyguarding the victims from the abusers with brute force and lecturing them, and us, the readers, on why their actions can cause so much harm.

I like both series a lot. They both address the struggle of the victims, and what outsiders could to to help them, while also bringing up the fact that sometimes the priority should be in taking away the oppressor's ability to oppress.

In the manga, the main character devises a plan to record the actions of the bullies through multiple hidden cameras in order to expose them in the media and allow everyone to be aware of their actions so that people learn that if they become bullies everyone will know. On the webtoon, the main leads are given authority to punish the bullies as much as they see fit under the notion that they're doing it to protect someone, so if anyone hurts someone, they need to be ready to be hurt too.

The reason I like these is because, quite often in stories the focus is "forgive and forget, being happy is the best revenge, they don't know any better, they're just kids being kids" and so on.

They underplay the harm and lasting damage of being abused, while in these series, the idea is "being abused can scar someone for life, so let's do all we can to make sure the abusers won't want to abuse anyone."

It works under the premise that some people should be given more power and freedom so they can protect the weak and that bullies should have bigger consequences to fear.

That sounds very effective at first, but once you stop to think about it, you notice that a lot of these ideas heavily rely on the goodwill of those in a position of power for it to work.

Even the characters inside each comic point out at some point "Cool idea bro, but that's not exactly a practical solution."

Yeah, I would feel safer if I knew a good person was watching over me all the time and ready to freely beat up some bullies if I was in danger, but what would happen if all this power was given to some prick who's just waiting to use it to take advantage of others? Or what if they make a mistake and think I'm the abuser for some reason?

The liberty to beat up students or the implementation of cameras to invade people's privacy at school... This is just begging to be exploited.

The risk in putting too much power and freedom in the hands of someone to be responsible for our safety is that we might think we have a Superman when in reality we have a Homelander.

Superman works because he's a man with all the strength and all the kindness to safely protect victims from harm. He's a symbol of the best of the best because he can help and he wants to help.

It's not just about the power to help, it's about the sense of ethics and kindness to use that power well. But, again, that's still not a perfect solution to deal with situations of abuse because... How the heck do you make sure that you have a good person behind the wheel making these decisions for us? How do we guarantee our own Superman?

Each one of these stories does a good job of addressing parts of the problem and parts of the solution, but still not the full picture.

Encanto addresses the struggle and pain of the victim and the lasting impact that bad actions, even unintentional bad actions, can have on them;

The two comics address the need of those who are in a position capable of helping to actually help and the need to incapacitate the abusers' ability to abuse;

And Superman addresses the need for kindness behind your actions so you can use all that power responsibly and that maybe too much power isn't always a good thing if it goes to the wrong hands;

While trying to think of what would be a good way to mesh all these things together, I started to think about one of the comments I saw once regarding and Episode of Invincible focused on Atom Eve.

Basically, the comment was talking about a scene where Eve's friend ends up becoming afraid of her after finding out she had powers and starts distancing himself from her, and what they said was pretty much "Wouldn't it be cool if we had some sort of way of teaching civilians that they don't need to fear super-powered people at schools?"

I saw that comment and thought, "Wouldn't it be good to have this anyway, even without the superpower aspect to teach kids how to be morally good people, shouldn't we?"

This brings me to the last two series that kinda encapsulate a good compromise between all these points, "School Back" and "We Now Begin Ethics."

School Back is about a lady janitor who often notices that some of the kids in her school are dealing with a lot of stuff that they can't tell either their parents or teachers, so she talks to them herself... And that's it.

It shows the struggle of the kids, it puts just enough power of action in the hands of someone older and wiser, and it helps nurture the importance of kindness, all by having a story where children have someone to talk to about their problems who can help them, and she talks about these things in very clever ways that makes the kids themselves reach their own conclusions.

We Now Begin Ethics is very similar in that it is about a wise adult in a moderate position of power who simply gives classes about ethics and morals. And again, that's all it needs, just showing that these people in need have someone who can help them.

He gives out lessons for them to think about (all while posing sexily to the camera every now and then because the artist of the manga really wants to drive home how attractive this man is), tells stories and describes situations so at the end he can ask them what to they think, inspires them to communicate with one another and to try to be open to new ideas without forcing his own ideas on them.

Basically going "This is what I think. Do you agree?"

And again, that's all there is to it. Just an adult talking with kids and helping them become better people by teaching them how to think about what really matters and not about what society wants us to think matters.

Now you might ask, "What about preventing the abusers from abusing?"

The idea in these cases is more about preventing these kids from ever becoming abusers to begin with. We get rid of bullies by teaching what's right and wrong from an early age and making so they never consider the idea of hurting others to begin with.

Teaching how to sympathize, how to listen, how to be patient, how to be humble, how to not put your needs above others, how to use your words and think about your actions, how to properly value yourself and how to be honest with your feelings.

It's not a perfect solution, especially for those who are already too far gone, but just being there for someone who needs to talk honestly does wonders to help one another.

A lot of bullies are just people with many negative thoughts who never had someone to help them properly deal with these thoughts, mostly because a lot of adults really struggle to understand kids and teens, and in both these series, the protagonists are great examples of adults who know exactly how to use their words to reach the point they need to reach for those that need to listen to it.

There are a lot of stories about people wanting to help out others, but they kinda make it look easier than it actually is, which is not bad as it motivates you to be more open to the idea of being selfless and more being there for others... But you need to know what you're doing so you won't cause more harm than good.

If I was in Encanto and were to try and talk with Mirabel to convince her she's as special as anyone in her family, what would I say?

If I was one of the teachers fighting bullies in Get Schooled, how would I know when to hold back and stop fighting? How would I know which resources are going too far?

If I was Superman, how would I make people know they can trust me so they can come to me for help?

It's not just about understanding the victim's struggle like in Encanto, it's not just about being strong enough to protect the victim like in Get Schooled, It's not about having enough kindness in your heart to want to help, it is about being mature enough to know what the situation needs, being kind enough to want to offer it, and being good enough to able to offer it.

I'm sure there are a lot more to learn when it comes to abuse and being abused, about offenders and victims, about having power and being powerless, being mature or immature, about helping those in need, and so on... These were just my quick thoughts based on a couple of pieces of media that made me think about each respective case and how much I like the way they tackled it.

Encanto taught about the struggle of the victim

Get Schooled and Is it my Fault taught about the need of empowering those that can help and depowering those that can harm

My Adventures with Superman teaches about the significance of real good intentions when wanting to help

And School Back and We Begin Ethics taught how even something as simple as just knowing how to talk to others can have a great positive effect on others

This is all very surface-level discussion around each topic, of course, but it's still interesting to see how writers try to talk about it at all.

(Edit, these were all feelings I had before learning about the recent events regarding Get Schooled 😓 I'm deeply sorry for having promoted a series that carried so much ill will inside of it. This post literally aged like milk in a matter of days...)

[lugarn]

This is my Playboyy bingo card! Behold its beauty and horror *_*

I'm going for a blackout, because why not??

Behind the cut are the ideas I have so far, warning for uhh...everything in Playboyy. All of these are preliminary ideas that might or might not get written, first, and second, I am a firm believer that two people can take the same idea and write very different stories because fiction is all about execution. If there's an idea here that grabs you... have fun!

Keen/Jump - Something something come play

Porsche/Jump - i want them both in thigh highs!!!!

Porsche/Soong - Soong is actually into all the disgust and humiliation that Porsche doles out and realizes he's too into it and this can never happen again (alternatively, set after everything is done, soong asks porsche to humiliate him because he misses it and first can't do it without his head getting fucked up)

Nuth/Soong - Pre-show, Soong blowing Nuth for extra drugs in the age old tradition of fucking your dealer

Soong/Captain - Soong and Captain happen to share an elevator in a parking garage. They make the most of it.

Captain/Keen - Captain working very hard to get Keen off, Keen doesn't react to it at allllll and Captain gets off on that a little. He gets off even more on the grunt when Keen comes and the evidence that Captain did a good job all over his face.

First/Keen - First blows Keen, back before Captain ever ends up on the team. First looking at Keen at the underwear party just like "I...know him. It's not relevant. Should i say? I won't."

First/Nant - Nant is the reason First is in the friends group

First/Phop - Phop cams for First, pre-show

Puen/First - Puen and First have sex, after First is helping them. "I don't want you to feel like you have to!" "I want to. The door is there, you're not stopping me. Or are you?" (and first is very much not.) "What about Aob?" "He likes it better when people come in me. Says it really feels like evidence someone else has been there." (first, finding this very hot but also. Wow so much info.) (Could also have this end up with a threesome??)

Puen/Porsche - Puen finds Porsche somewhere, avoiding going home after the dinner where almost everyone's there. Gives Porsche a good Dad talk.

Teena/Prom - Teena's having A Bad Time after a client is rough while fucking him and Prom gives him kisses

FREE SPACE - Zouey realizing that he's still objectifying Teena, somehow. (Maybe Aob is the one who realizes what's going on and gives him a talk?)

Aprons/Service play - Nuth/Phop a light piece of Phop feminization/exploring Phop's gender feelings (them pearllsss) (phop looking at himself dressed up for nuth on the camera and actually liking it)

Biting - Porsche/Jump, leaving a mark because he can

Casual nudity - Aob/Puen/Captain, it gets hot in the laundry room

Celibacy - Teena being mostly celibate outside of the context of sex work and not thinking that's weird or a trauma response ("Don't you wank?" "Who needs to with this job?")

Cheating - Captain/Soong/First - Captain's kink for being the other woman as explored via First and Soong, set after Captain's kicked out, First uses it as a way to be able to pay him way too much for it.

Foot kink - Prom. who with ???? pending but I would not be shocked to learn Prom has a lil foot kink. Maybe he paints his toenails

Humiliation - Jason/Porsche because of who I am as a person

Loss of virginity - Puen losing his virginity to Jason and then deciding that it doesn't count

Mutual masturbation - trans!Nuth and Phop, squirting in the tub, YOLO

Role play - Aob/First, Daddy shit obviously (at Playboyy, the very first time First went, before he started hurting people)

Self-discovery - Jason/Nant, Nant is seduced while staying with Porsche and um. Maybe a little more into being hurt than he thought he'd be, though Jason still makes the experience unpleasant. 

Watersports - Aob/Jump (i don't care I want it)

[youredreamingofroo]

Not so Berry, a long recap (1/3)

prev / next

Feel free to read this whether or not you're invested in the future of my Not so Berry save, if you are, i also encourage you to check out the intro cards for all these sims

There are images at the end of each recap Alt text very briefly explains the scene

Humble Beginnings.

We start the story in Henford-On-Bagley, in Fall, with Coral. Simon Scott decided to visit, and ended up asking to stay over, Coral let him stay (despite the shitty living situation), they also hit it off. Sometime later I (not coral) found out his wife, Sara, was PREGNANT… 

They start dating (he's married btw!!! 😐), but during dinner one night, Sara finds out about the two, they both get chewed out. The next day, Simon "apologized" to Coral in a very intimate way.

Later on, Simon tells her that Sara and him got divorced, Coral proposes to him later that night. Since the proposal, he’d become silent, but one day, he asked her out on a date, the date goes poorly, they're both distant, and a man catches Coral's eye, she was drawn to this man, Simon tries to get her back, fails and leaves, the man, Don, and Coral go back to her place to tango. Coral turns out to be pregnant. 

She has a discussion with Don abt the baby, and in the end, she decides to keep the baby, she’s still engaged atp. she gives birth to a girl, the heir, named Cataleya.

Coral finally decides to tell Simon what’s going on, Simon was enraged, but offered her a second chance, she didn’t take it.

(A.N) I left my game unpaused when I went to make dinner and i came back to Coral being pregnant.

Love fest comes around and Don takes Coral to the festival, after a ton of damning signs, he proposes to her (and also swaps traits, Non-committal to Loyal).

Don realizes how much he loves being a father, Coral gives birth to triplets, Peregrine, Constance and Emmett, and while taking care of the newborns, Don has another self-discovery (became Family-oriented)

Coral begins a sub-plot where she tackles her self-esteem issues, specifically on how she's gained weight from all her pregnancies.

In the meantime, the triplets age up, Coral argues with Don about wanting attention, how they still haven’t gotten married, however he didn’t retaliate because he didn’t want Cataleya hearing them argue, and then Cataleya aged up.

(I changed the lifespan to normal at this point)

Coral finally loses enough weight to be happy with herself, but she wonders if she’s actually doing this for herself or for someone else…

The triplets age up to toddlers!

Don and Coral have an argument, they sit in silence for 10 minutes, then Don tells her what she needs to change about herself, and she reluctantly agrees

Cataleya ages up to a child- And Coral ended up pregnant AGAIN (don't remember/know how it happened)

Although she’s two pregnancies and four kids late, she finally goes to counseling for this unwanted pregnancy. She also decides to get her tubes tied.

The last gen 2 baby is born, Callum Meadows, who turns out to be an Albino.

Don and Coral finally get married (Don also invited Simon to the wedding 👀)

Peregrine begins his sub-plot where he fears failure and wants to be like his sisters, he starts locking himself in his room and doing homework and extra-credit work as much/often as possible. 

Coral and Don FINALLY age up to Adults, and Cataleya ages up to a teen.

Later on, Callum ages up to a child (I stopped caring about this kid when he aged up to an infant, so from here on, don’t expect much abt him at all)

[yonemurishiroku]

I think TSATS is making things harder for itself - A mediocre background analyse

See:

It's, supposedly, a novel for Young Adults.

A large part of its consumers, however, would be adults.

Instead of the familiar actions and mythology, its focus is a relationship - romance, if you will - and self-discovery.

The last point technically isn't its fault, but it plays in the never-ending loop of critique, so Imma count that in.

For the most part, we're forgetting TSATS is a part of TSATS is a part of an already firmly established franchise, which is built upon a no little amount of actions, fightings, and tension in general. PJO, HOO, and TOA all feature nearing apocalypses that require missions and sometimes a journey to stop. This is comepletely not TSATS' fault, but it has inadvertedly become the drawbacks for its approach as the later-born of the universe.

The audience's age.

I know we've established that TSATS is a YA novel, however, I doubt the number of adults who end up engaging is negligible. Where do they come from?

They're the fans of the previous books. AKA, fans of this series since the day it was born.

Remember. The Lightning Thief was published in 2005. The Titan's curse came out in 2007. The Blood of Olympus, in which Solangelo was first hinted at, was published in 2014. The time distance is 18 , 16 and 9 years respectively.

Assuming one read TTC at 12 years old - the minimum age to read an YA book, they would be 28 years old now. That's an adult. If one read BOO at 12 years out, they would be 21 years old. Again, an adult.

Furthermore, are there many of them? Yes. Definitely yes. The Riordanverse as a series has been expanding over 18 years as one of people's childhood memories. The number of fans it holds, has gains and is gaining, throughout the years can't possibly be little. Along with the universe, they grow, too.

But would they read the book? Some of them might not, provided they fall out of love with the series or aren't interested. But some will. As I have said and we all know: PJOverse is many's childhood series. We love it, of course we would want to keep up with it.

-> TSATS is a YA novel, but it would end up being consumed by adults as well. I'm not quite sure it would be majority or not, but the number would be undoubtedly a lot.

SPOILERS: Also? The Lil Nas X reference absolutely does not help. I honestly don't know why Rick thought putting it in would be a good idea...

Which brings us to the second point:

2. TSATS, as it turns out, focuses on relationships and self-discovery rather than the familiar world-saving tension. I can have a field day with this.

It might cause misdirection, which involves preferences.

Named "a Nico di Angelo adventure", you'd epxect the story about the greatness, the horrors, the scenes and things you encouter along the way and how it grows you... You know, an Adventure.

But instead, it leans more towards the emotional part, with a relationship in the center. It might not what you've expected.

I can't speak for the YA in USA since our tastes might vary, but I've seen someone who claimed that the young adults - or "Kids", in their words - prefer a little bit of physical scenes. If that's the case, my point stands.

which leads us to another main point:

Since I've established that TSATS has a large number of adult consumers, does that mean this new topic - self-discovery, relationship problems, etc... - might interest them?

I'm not saying it won't, but it might not, because:

It's unfamiliar to its loyal audience, and unfamiliarity grants at least a bit of apprehension and repulsion.

It's quite natural, actually. You'd be wary if you encounter something you're unaccustomed to.

I have seen some people claming the Tartarus in TSATS doesn't match its previously portraited impressive aura, along with some problems in the story's pace. This, I suggest, might be the result of the sudden change in the story's focus: It weighs more in emotions and everything feelings, thus clouding the actions, thrilling scenes, etc...

I'm not saying the emotional aspect and relationships have never contributed to the PJOverse. And YA read about romance and emotions too! In fact, we have seen beautiful friendships and romances alike. However, as a series that take place in a mythological world and started out in the Adventure category, the Adventure part makes up a great foundation.

Without it, it's only logical that the story itsself would appear somewhat foreign.

The introduction of a new, unfamiliar author might invoke some disturbance, as well.

Mark Oshiro's style is definitely different from the usual Rick Riordan's flow. In a way, it diminishes the latter's usual shounen-like, mythological, thrilling vibes.

You'd expect them to work well together and complete each other, each specializes in a facet of the story. However, it might come out as restricting once they go out of sync. TSATS might come out as shallow - in the department of characters' emotional and mental aspects and/or lame - when it comes to the actions.

-> With the new story target, TSATS runs the risk of failing to meet the psychological requirements, along with the unability to utilize its famous, widely-loved mythological, fiction vibes.

In conclusion: I cannot fault Rick's choice to choose a new purpose for this book - considering Solangelo was deemed to be its main character, but it's obvious that this decision has brought TSATS many challenges. Some of which might be too much, hence a wave of critiques aimed at it just a few days after release.

I just feel very sad for this book.

[angelosearch]

Okay so no one asked about my Of Mind and Magic WIP but I really want to talk about it anyway. And when I say WIP, I mean a page of notes. But in my head, there's a lot.

Of Mind and Magic is my... comfort fic? It is the core plot of all my daydream scenarios for the last year. It is where I export my brain when I need to not ruminate on something irl. It is the longfic I will likely never write because it is basically an FF8 post-game soap opera that is loaded with every headcanon I've ever had. However, every once in a while, I will come up with something in this sandbox that I will use elsewhere.

The fic is honestly deeply personal and there are some concepts I'd want to introduce but may feel too distant from the "reality" of the game for me to confidently write about.

BUT just because I am unsure I will ever write it, doesn't mean I don't want to talk about it! And perhaps if I do talk about it enough I will give in and try...

This fic is the ULTIMATE marrying of my two "unskippable cutscene" topics: FFVIII and mental health/psychology/neuroscience.

The main concept is that using magic in the world of FFVIII takes a toll on your mental health. We already know that summoning GFs affects memory storage and retrieval, and this is pushing that idea further. The more magic you use, and the more powerful magic you summon, the more potential there is for diseases of the mind and the development of toxic thought patterns.

But it also works the other way. Those with mental illness and those with still-developing brains (children and teenagers) are predisposed to being able to capably wield magic. This blurred "membrane" between the conscious mind and magical power can also manifest in other magic-related abilities, like manipulating dreamscapes and premonitions/visions of the future.

Particularly, those with developing brains are more capable of using magic because their pre-frontal cortex (the decision-making center of the brain) is not fully formed until age 24-27. On some unconscious level, people must decide to accept magic as something they can tap into, and if your brain is fully developed and functioning it recognizes the magic and rejects it as an "immune" response. This is why women must receive Sorceress powers for the first time as children or young adults. Once the magic is accepted in this vulnerable place (Sorceress magic or otherwise) the capacity to use magic (or accept more magic from a sorceress) never goes away. Adults can choose to use magic for the first time after their brain fully develops, but it is never as strong. People cannot junction GFs if they haven't done so before they are in their late 20s.

There is some optional dialogue with Edea at the orphanage on disk three (after the promise): "A knight will present you with peace of mind. He will protect your spirit."

In this fic, this idea plays out in the sense that the knight must ground the sorceress and help her limit her magic use so she does not descend into "madness" - melt her brain and lose herself to the all-consuming power of the magic. However, the bond between sorceress and knight does weaken the mind-magic membrane further, so there is a reciprocal need for the sorceress to also monitor the mental health of her knight.

If a knight was already predisposed to magic (maybe by using it heavily before their brain finished developing) and had a mental illness, they could have tremendous potential for magical ability.

Do you see where I am going here?

It is an eight-year post-game story from Squall's POV (at least in the first part). It's Squall/Rinoa but in the beginning, they have lost themselves and each other. It's really a story of self-discovery, change, caring for the inner child, legacy, and longing. Lots of family stuff because that's what I do, including a major plot line involving Raine and LAGUNA LAGUNA LAGUNA always.

This is why I hesitate to even try to write it: It is steeped in mental health/therapy stuff. I think I am capable of handling that as a writer, but the intensity to which I'd want to take it I am not sure is... appealing? Especially because I wouldn't want to give many trigger warnings to avoid spoiling. Also, I wonder if people would find it "appropriate" to bring super-heavy stuff into this world? Does anyone want to read about Rinoa suffering from an eating disorder in a very serious and as-accurate-as-I-can-make-it way? Or is that just insulting to people suffering from eating disorders? I like reading about this stuff, but I'm not everyone.

Squall comes to realize he has bipolar disorder... I am bipolar, I relate to Squall, and I know what bipolar experiences look like. I have no in-game "proof" of Squall being bipolar (though there's nothing in the game that disproves it either) but it's one of those things where you long to see yourself in the media you consume. Honestly, "Squall is bipolar with cptsd" (like me) was where this fic started. He has a very complete and public breakdown in this story. If you ever wanted to know what it's like to be admitted to an acute crisis psych unit in a hospital, this fic would show that. But maybe that is something that is better to write about in nonfiction??

A lot of this stuff is based on lived experience - either of myself or of other people via case studies/memoirs I've read. I rarely see stuff of this intensity depicted in works of fiction, let alone fanfiction. Is that because of a lack of representation, or is it because people don't want to read it? I honestly do not know.

I don't have a clear idea of where this story is going or when/where it will end, which is another factor that makes me hesitate in writing it. In my mind, I have two "season finales" but it's still ongoing (though Chaos Theory has taken over lately).

Anyway, I've been dying to throw this all down somewhere. If you've made it to the end of this post, good for you. You now know what the inside of my brain looks like.

[goose-books]

3 for Anna and Errans, and also 20 and 21 :3

i meant to remember to answer these before the last day of pride month. and then! anyway,

3. How did your oc discover themself? Did something cause them to question, or did they always know?

(godsong WIP page with links) (for context, anna is god's specialest girl ever and the main character, and she's a transfemme nonbinary lesbian. errans is a minor side character with terrible sideburns and transmasc unswag)

anna grew up in a city where priests have a special gender and pronoun, and she was designated a priest at age 11 by the gods, so her transness started as sort of an occupational thing; she was like, "okay, i'm priestgender," and then progressed to, "wait, i like this gender stuff." you are allowed to be priestgender and also another thing, and getting to explore her presentation at the temple lead to the realization that her Other Thing was womanhood (nonbinary-flavored). more a sister than a woman etc <3

as for the lesbianism, i don't think that was ever a discovery for him; there's no homophobia in ivander and his parents are in a bisexual polycule, so i think he just always knew his future person would be a woman. (i say "person" because ivander doesn't have legal marriage, but there is a religious equivalent if you want to dedicate yourself to someone long-term; otherwise you can just do Whatever. city that is absolutely bursting with gender and fruitiness)

errans i'm less sure about dskhfkdsfkdsnfsd. i know he came out as trans when he was around sixteenish; i think he knew he was bisexual first, and the image coming to me is errans experiencing the "do-i-want-to-date-that-guy-or-be-that-guy" about someone he probably never actually spoke to. i don't get a vibe like he ever loathed being a woman, more so that eventually he just realized he could simply be a man. for free. and was like. "well this is clearly so much more what i'm supposed to be doing"

now i'm thinking about awkward teenage errans and his awkward genvy crushes. god bless him

20. Have your ocs helped you in self discovery? How?

sigh. well i have to tell the story don't i. POV: you are [max], age 12, working on the first iteration of the story that will become TMR (my on-hiatus YA transgender evil-faerie high fantasy). you give the character who will become moon marigold all of your uncomfortable feelings about your body, feelings that are certainly not physical dysphoria because you are cisgender. about a year or so later, you realize that this WIP is full of cishet white people (i have since remedied this), and you should really add some diversity. hey, moon's got weird body feelings! what if you made her genderfluid? that sounds great! you are not thinking at all about where those weird body feelings may have come from or how this may reflect on anything at all.

POV: you are [max], still age 13ish, and you've got a new WIP (it's my also-on-hiatus NA monsters-in-NYC thing). you are going to put a binary transgender person in it. not for any specific reason. you just wanted to. who can say why. certainly not you. anyway you've never done this before and you are a little nervous because how can you, as a cisgender person, accurately represent a trans character? you muse about how to write dysphoria as you dress up for an orchestra concert, in an outfit that is extremely feminine. halfway through, you get derailed by crying real tears about said feminine outfit, because now the boy who sits beside you in the orchestra will know that you are a girl (because your long hair and name clearly couldn't have tipped him off beforehand). could you draw on this experience to describe dysphoria, you wonder? or maybe that other time you cried in the shower? but that's bad and wrong, isn't it? because you're cisgender. so comparing your own... whatever this is... to dysphoria would be an APPROPRIATION of dysphoria! how villainously cis of you! how horrible! you'll have to figure out some other way to write this character.

...anyway. thank you to moon and augustus for that. my kings my brothers in arms. and they BOTH do arson in their respective WIPs, so maybe i have another plot twist in my future?

21. Free ramble card wee

FREE RAMBLE WEE... hmm, well, since i've already touched on it a little in this ask, one of the most interesting things about worldbuilding for godsong is that most of the major settings don't have homophobia/transphobia/misogyny the same way that our world does. (i say most because ambergris is stuck in misogynyville. it's probably fine and i bet she won't get violent.) i honestly didn't think super hard about this; i just wanted to write a high fantasy world where women and nonbinary people and bisexuals and lesbians can hold positions of (sometimes corrupt) power, or where the chosen one can be a transfemme lesbian whose issues aren't transphobia but how to complete her quest.

except then i realized that not having homophobia/transphobia/misogyny invites so many other questions about the social fabric of a society. i mean, the modern legal concept of marriage is rooted pretty solidly in heterosexual relationships wherein women move from one family to another, right? so if gender relations are entirely different, do these places even have marriage? do these places even have gender? this is something i'm still figuring out (and honestly, if anyone has suggestions for media that pokes at this kind of thing, i'd love to hear them!). the two main cities in godsong are ivander (a theocracy) and farria (a democracy with a new revolution every tuesday), and i've been playing around in my head with some of the differences--for example, in ivander, being trans is generally considered holy, because the city's patron god is many-gendered; in farria, being trans is something nobody thinks twice about, because everyone is focused on Just Getting By. in ivander, there are at least three defined genders (man, woman, and priest) which can all overlap. in farria, gender doesn't define social relations so much as a parallel hierarchy of military and/or governmental power--eg, farria's very own neopronouns marc antony isn't afraid of "emasculation" in the gender sense, because xir gender is "if you like me you're gay," but xe's terrified of emasculation (for lack of a better word) in the sense of being seen as weak/submissive. in farria these things are way less connected than they are in our world. i'm still working out a lot of the details, but it's been a lot of fun to think about :3

wow that sure was a free ramble. thank you for the asks rook i love you so much <3

(pride asks!)

[belle-keys]

Sugar Rush Ride MV as a possible metaphor for predatory relationships (Meta)

I posted this piece on TXT’s subreddit, but they removed it because they said my subject matter is too triggering. Screw them. Reposting here because I’d like to share it nonetheless.

Thematically, Sugar Rush Ride is about the loss of innocence, about youth and temptation (as per the name of the chapter), and also about that niche intersection between trickery and seduction.

The music video conjures images of Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, but, of course, with a darker, and a more sexual twist. When I say this concept is sexual, I want to emphasize that I do NOT think that the MV and choreography are designed to sexualize the boys in the eyes of the audience at all. Rather, I see the choreography as an illustration or as a performance of sexuality, in as much as sexuality is typically a part of boyhood, and I see the MV as a depiction of sexuality in its adolescent or its "blooming phase" (note the vivid colours in the MV, the numerous vines and flowers, the clothes falling off their bodies; gardens and flowers are inherently symbolic of growth and sexuality). This MV is about eroticism and the relationship between the Ego and the Body. It's about the self-discovery aspect of sexuality and, by consequence, about the temptation and internal conflicts that arise during one's sexual awakening (especially if there are taboo undertones to it). We see multiple instances of the boys gasping, repeatedly touching their own necks and bodies, performing gestures that are explicitly reminiscent of being in the all-consuming throes of pleasure. Through this blissful awakening, the "devil" starts tempting the subject to give up even more of themselves, with the promise of a sugar rush (an emotional or sexual high) as a reward for further compliance. I find it hard to believe the devil isn’t a categorically older figure based on the lyrics, and based on how trust and deception form part of the narrative.

The boys are swept off their feet into a world of magic, of passion and fruitfulness, of wonder and pleasure, which all bring to mind the explosion of feeling and sensation that adolescence and self-discovery can evoke. I want to reiterate, the orgasmic motifs in the MV and choreography are not for the pleasure of the audience - it's more of a storytelling element in the context of the choreo than it exists for the purpose of sexualizing anyone. It aims to represent pleasure and sensation than to seeks to please or to seduce. The subject, in this case, the boys, is leaving childhood and entering a new world, now transcendant as they move away from childhood innocence into adulthood. Likewise, the sugar motif is quite obviously deliberate - it evokes images of hyperactive children, but also of Lolita's red lollipop. But this beautiful world of desire, symbolized by the Bali landscape in the MV, didn't come at no cost. We know they were brought there by the "devil", with his pretty words and with his promises. The boys have been tempted and they've been tricked. The devil beckoning the boys with literal, actual sugar speaks to the age old warning we give to childen: don't take candy from strangers. In this way, I believe devil is not another child or another adolescent. The devil, someone they've come to trust and believe in, is manipulating them with the “sugar”, with the candy, with the high of the sugar rush. Likewise, I think the outro where they directly call the devil who is their seducer "sugar" speaks to elements of fondness and of betrayal.

All highs have a comedown. The once wonderful butterflies (Nabokov himself was a butterfly scientist, by the way) are now pests and beasts. This world they've crash landed to like castaways is no longer a paradise or a welcome escape from reality; it’s actually turning against them. The subject, that is, the boys, has been precocious, and it's only the new pleasure of erotic tempation and sexual satisfaction that's keeping this charade going. Childhood is over by virtue of the sexual awakening and by the evident corruption of their innocence by the devil, and there's no deserting what they've experienced. What's also over is the sugar rush from the “sugar” they were tempted to swallow, and now is time for the crash, which is likely why they're leaving the island at the end of the MV. For this reason, I think the story of the Sugar Rush Ride music video speaks to having one's innocence lost and also simultaneously having a precocious sexual awakening by someone who's manipulative, and also likely much older.